Hangman's Cottage. Colliton Park, The Walks, Dorchester. [Another view] Photograph (2008) and text by Philip V. Allingham. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Hardy was fascinated as a boy by the role of the hangman, and remembered many years later peeping in at his window as he ate his dinner on the eve on an execution. The cottage, somewhat removed from the rest of the town, is featured in the short story "The Withered Arm." There once was an external staircase, but in most respects the dwelling (now a private residence) is little changed since Hardy's boyhood. In the story, published in BlackwoodÕs Edinburgh Magazine in January 1888 and subsequently collected in Wessex Tales, the young wife, Gertrude Lodge, makes an arrangement with the hangman, Davies, to arrive at the little wicket in the surrounding wall of the cottage at one o'clock so that he can privately deliver her a piece of the corpse of the condemned man which she may touch in order to cure her withered arm.
Reference
Kay-Robinson, Denys. The Landscape of Thomas Hardy, with photographs by Simon McBride. Exeter: Salem House & Web and Bower, 1984.
Last modified 21 September 2008